polarhome.com policy

Read this page carefuly! It is essencial in order to use polarhome services.

polarhome.com is non commercial, educative effort for popularization of shell enabled operating systems and Internet services, offering shell accounts and other services on all available resources.

polarhome.com learned from earlier experience and from 2001.10.10
changed its user policy in order to improve service quality and stop malicious
activity from member servers. Accounts are split between ftp and shell access (more to read at the bottom of the page)

polarhome.com from 2005.08.01 has new user policy. ftp accounts are revoked and just template and shell accounts exist. This policy modification was needed in order to protect polarhome from users that use their ftp accounts for phishing, spoofing, distribute warez, running pirate forums and other malitious activity.

costs 10 local currency units per username (per host) - but at least 2 USD value (in case when 10 local currency units value is less then 2USD), that should be sent
to polarhome.com with the correctly filled and signed application form.

you have to pay this amount only once (when you upgrade your template account to shell access).

just regular, registered template account
can be upgraded to shell account

every malicious activity will result as fallback to template account level or total removal, but if your account has not been denied, you can apply again for shell account by sending the appilcation form/paying the fee/waiting/etc... Please note, if user has more than one account, all accounts will be removed. On polarhome does not exist hack and clean accounts, just normal user accounts that can be lost in such situations.

Q: Do you really mean it?A: Yes I do. Please, do not send mails with this kind of question. It is true that the "pricing" is rather odd, but it is quite easy to calculate to everybody how much it the one time fee. The value does not matter. Never compare with other sites. BUT you have to send it with the shell appication, no matter how low or high value it is, in order to protect polarhome users. No exceptions.

Q: What means "10 local currency units"?A: polarhome.com is used by users all around the World and fixed price
in one currency could put quite lot of users in negative position, because for ex:
$10 does not have same value for US citizens and for Brazilians or Romanians. In some countries people work whole month or even more for $10.
Therefore, everybody should pay 10 units of their own main local currency as:

10 USD for USA

10 AUD for Australia

10 NIS for Israel

10 EURO for EMU

... etc.

but at least 2 USD value.
It means...

20 SEK for Sweden

600 SIT for Slovenia

70 000 RUL for Romania

60 RUR for Russia

600 HUF for Hungary

... etc.

With this method, system will be reachable worldwide under similar conditions.Please note, that it is just a step up fee - AKA administration fee, that you pay only once, during shell upgrade, and you send together with the shell application form. There is no monthly fee for polarhome.com users but this, one time application fee is per account and per host.

Q: What if does not exist 10 unit bank note?
A: For these countries admission fee will be the lowest paper bank note, but at least 2 USD value (per username and per host).

Q: Why this constraint with "at least 2 USD value"?
A: Some countries like Romania and Slovenia have very low exchange rate to other convertible valutas, therefore users could appreciate to achieve shell accounts for 2000 Lei when the stamp costs 15000 Lei. Some of the users abused this situation by registering hundreds of accounts and later used to resell or for remote attacks without responsibility.

Q: Do I have to change admission fee to USD?
A: No, no way. You have to send your local currency as it is. (exception is when you choose to pay with PayPal or other method that does not support your currency)
Q: How can I pay? Where should I send?A: Payment methods are described in the application form. NOTE: do not send the application form without payment nor payment without application form. Both are required.
Q: Can I register more than one username?A: Sure you can, if you need them. You can even write them all on one single application form, or put few application forms to one envelope.
Please note, that usernames/template accounts need to be created on every polarhome host. The servers are independent, therefore it can happen that the desired username is already used, as well as the user@server1 is not the same person as user@server2.

Q: I do not have a printer. What should I do?
A: You can write by hand all required information on a blank paper. Actually the hardcopy information holder is less important than the information itself. It would be accepted even a bottle of wine if you succeed to write required data on it. :-)
Q: Do I need to give my real name and address?A: Our policy requires real name, but obviously we can not check some user's real identity in another part of the world. Registration is based on honour and trust. However, the application form, e-mail address and other user information are handeled and stored confidentially and are not sold or used for advertisment purpose.
Q: Can I run eggdrop, BNC and ircd from shell?A: Yes, you can. You can upload, compile, build, run bg processes and use all available programs and resources on the system. Shell is as open as it was earlier (now even with crontab). eggdrop, BNC and other irc servers, bouncers, proxies and non destructive bots are not considered to be malicious.
Q: Is polarhome.com a commercial site?A: No, according the statistics there is no significant income from admission fees, but users have much higher respect to their shell accounts... all income is used for server upgrades and site improvements.
Q: What do we achieve?A: We achieve a more flexible system from users point of view:

no denied hosts, networks

valid and serious users

stable system

less overload

more services

income for server upgrade

... etc.

Q: I had a shell account at polarhome.com. What should I do?A: Your earlier account (before 2001.10.10) have been transformed to ftp account. Existing accounts have not been deleted and all content have been kept. Otherwise, you may choose among the following alternatives:

continue to use as ftp user

upgrade to shell account

stop use polarhome.com services

Q: I had an ftp account at polarhome.com. What should I do?A: Your earlier account (before 2005.08.01) have been transformed to template account. Existing accounts have not been deleted and all content have been kept - except that web content is not reachable through web and ftp protocols any more. Otherwise, you may choose among the following alternatives:

continue to use as a template user (just e-mail)

upgrade to shell account

stop use polarhome.com services

You may download your web content through Usermin. Access through Admin page. More detailed description in FAQ
Q: Can I have root access on the host?A: Polarhome provides regular user shell access.
In case you want to have root access you might be interested in purchasing a dedicated servers provided by the polarhome team. That account gives root access to an own dedicated server.
Read more at Root access and dedicated services.
Q: Why polarhome.com has this strange user policy?A: If you are interested to learn more about pros and contras, main consideration, reasons and decisions:
- how polarhome became as it is today?
- why polarhome has this odd shell policy?
Find more explanation in the Minutes from the decision maker document.